It has never been more vital that we continue to build the future of journalism, and there is an urgent need to find the next people who understand this is their mission. Photographer: Craig Ruttle/Bloomberg

Summer nights in San Luis Obispo are when I become a salesman for journalism.

I face 25 talented high school journalists whose reward for surviving another grueling bootcamp day of all things deadline and digital is a bag of circus animal cookies. I destroy their dreams and then immediately try to rebuild them.

The students at the California Scholastic Press Association’s annual high school journalism workshop want to know about their prospects for frivolous things such as, well, employment in a field they love enough to give up 13 days of their summer to pursue. They are eager to hear that they might have a future in something that stirs as much passion in them as the dream of medical school does in their parents.

As the CSPA’s president/chairman of the board, our only board member in senior management of a news organization and a workshop alum who long ago had the same questions in my stay at Cal Poly, I owe them the truth.

It never has been more difficult to land a job in journalism. Our industry is under siege from external (and internal) forces and our field has no room for dabblers or dilettantes. But it also never has been more vital that we continue to build the future of journalism, and there is an urgent need to find the next people who understand this is their mission.

The longest-running — and, we will argue, most prestigious — high school journalism workshop in the nation is a better place than most to find the future. For instance, the past three National High School Journalists of the Year are CSPA graduates and have returned as counselors.

It’s easy for the all-volunteer board and faculty of the workshop — many from competing organizations who band together each summer because of their love for the CSPA and journalism — to remain excited when, as we approach our 67th year, we clearly are still doing some things right.

But we also had a year when one of our longtime board members and favorite faculty members was laid off during the workshop. That was a more realistic way to show our students the realities of the business than any simulation we could have created. Every member of our group has experienced turmoil we refuse to hide, even if unfettered optimism would be far more welcome. And that doesn’t even touch our nonprofit’s fiscal crisis caused when state budget woes are passed from Cal Poly to our visiting group.

Our students’ days are full of classes on everything from covering a murder trial and public records searches to reporting via social media and shooting video. Their nights include discussions with the handful of us who are in San Luis Obispo for more than a few days and the many instructors who make their way there for even just one evening.

We might have a topic in mind, and some students want nothing more than those circus animal cookies and sleep. Many embrace the opportunity, though, and ask the probing questions we encourage in and out of the classroom.

Inevitably, they want to know if they should major in journalism in college and if there is a future in the business when they’re done with school. Our answers vary wildly on the first (many of us did, but others insist they were better off branching out), and we are brutally honest about the second. There is no booming job market, print will continue to lose ground and antipathy toward journalists rarely has been more visceral. Yet there is a pressing need for digital-native journalists who possess both the myriad skills needed to reach today’s audience and the drive to shine a light on what thrives in the dark.

News organizations and their owners seemingly demand more than ever out of their staffs, but occasionally that leads to something special.

It struck me that the group that became the CSPA initially was supported by perhaps the most famous/infamous newspaper owner of all: William Randolph Hearst. His interest for the fledgling organization was not to secure journalism’s Fourth Estate role; he wanted Los Angeles Examiner sports reporter Ralph Alexander to procure cheap (but well-trained) labor for high school sports coverage.

In 1951, Alexander created what was an all-sports, all-boys workshop that eventually evolved into the all-inclusive, multifaceted operation that has helped launch the careers of top journalists across the nation.

Most of what journalists want is enough support — from their owners, their bosses and the public — to do their jobs well. They have a strong track record of making the most of the opportunities they are given and doing the work that is essential to a free society.

And the chance to do that, no matter how challenging journalism can be, is something I can sell with a clear conscience.

Todd Harmonson is the Orange County Register's senior editor and one of the lead editors for the Southern California News Group. He is an award-winning journalist who spent much of his career in sports as a reporter and, later, as the Register's sports editor. Harmonson has been honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Orange County Press Club for his column writing. Harmonson is the president and chairman of the board of the all-volunteer California Scholastic Press Association, which conducts one of the longest-running high school journalism workshops in the country. He was inducted into Cal State Fullerton’s Communications Wall of Fame in 2017. He and his wife, Michelle, have three adult children.